Quinn clamped a hand over Merry’s mouth before he could utter a word, and Merry started in his seat.
Not that Merry could speak because he was stunned speechless and unable to form a single coherent thought. Quinn more than liked him. Him. Shy, spineless, awkward, plain, nerdy, pathetic Merry the fairy. Him! The thought was overwhelming and Merry felt squishy inside. It was if his guts had turned to jelly. Now he understood what people meant when they said, “don’t get all mushy on me.” He was in seriously mushy condition.
“Say naught aloud, Merry, lest me queen hear ye.”
Quinn’s seriousness and intense emerald gaze scared Merry, but he nodded his assent and Quinn slowly removed his hand.
“I-I won’t say anything.”
Quinn nodded. “Nary a word on the air.”
He nodded again. “This queen, she can, like, she can hear what I say?”
“Aye, she can.”
Quinn was dead serious, and it made Merry more afraid. “Okay. Um, can I ask some questions?”
Quinn’s brow knitted then smoothed. “To answer ye first question, I be carin’ for ye since I begin me assignment. I find ye that first day under a tree late at night in the park. Ye be bleedin’ bad. I see it meself, I did.”
Merry tried to remember when he’d last been in the park at night. Sometimes he went there in the middle of the night if he’d had a particularly bad day with Rick; and sometimes if things got rough when his dad was drunk. The painful memory of that night drifted back to him. That had been a particularly bad day. And night. Rick slammed his head into a toilet bowl and his forehead split open. Luckily, some jock entered the bathroom in time to stop Rick from slamming his head into the toilet bowl a second time. The school principal had been furious, as if, somehow, it had been Merry’s fault that his head met a toilet bowl and split open. Then it was totally freakin’ embarrassing when the school nurse called an ambulance to take him to the hospital. All he’d needed was ten stitches and an x-ray. His dad came home drunk—again—and went ballistic about the anticipated hospital bill. Merry quickly explained that the school had taken care of it because it happened on school property, but it hadn’t done any good. His dad had hit him hard enough to break open the stitches. Blood had streamed down his face as he ran from the house. He didn’t remember much after that, except that the blood felt warm on his face in the cool autumn air as he ran.
It seemed as if it had happened light years ago when, in fact, it had happened on the first day of school only two months ago. He always shoved away memories that were painful to process. Some things could happen yesterday, but if they were too hard to think about, too painful, he locked them away in the library of his mind. He’d learned long ago to compartmentalize things, to carefully sift through the thoughts and memories, painful and not. Things that were painful went into this box or that box and were then placed on an imaginary shelf in the library. Things that he couldn’t figure out went into another box. And things that he never wanted to remember, well, he didn’t store those at all. He threw those away. If they came back and tried to haunt the library in his mind, he didn’t care. He kept them out by sheer force of will. He had to, or he wouldn’t be able to function like anything even remotely close to a human being.
“Aye, ye recall. Rick be an arse, and ye da’ not be better.”
Merry absently rubbed at the scar on his forehead. “That was the first day of school.” Surprisingly, his voice was steady. “Why didn’t I see you?”
“Ye did, ye simply not recall.”
No. If he’d seen Quinn, he would have remembered him.
Quinn smiled. “Who ye think got ye back to the hospital to mend ye stitches?”
It was Merry’s turn to frown. He remembered someone walking him to the hospital, though he couldn’t remember being there or getting home after that.
“Aye, me Merry, ye recall. Be time we go to class. I release time now.”
Merry hadn’t remembered that the first bell had clanged overhead only moments ago. He stood, and his side rudely reminded him that Rick had kicked him in the ribs. He breathed through the pain, picked up their lunch trays, and carried them to the trashcan. He dumped the trash, and Quinn took the trays from him and stacked them atop a nearby cart.
Quinn put an arm around him. “Come, me Merry. We get ye to class.”
Merry couldn’t help but to look up at Quinn in wonder as they walked. He had many questions. Questions like why no one mocked them as they walked down the hall, for starters. Should he put an arm around Quinn’s waist? He wanted to, but, as usual, he didn’t have the courage. Most importantly, did this mean that Quinn was—he could hardly think the words, let alone say them aloud—his boyfriend?
“Quinn?” he whispered.
“Aye?”
“Are we invisible right now?”
“Nay.”
“Then why isn’t everyone freaking out because you have your arm around me?”
“I do not wish it.”
“So, you can wish people not to be jerks?”
“Lest they essence be ill set from the start. Take Rick, by way of me example. His cruelty be like a fuel for ’im, and I cannot change ’is thinking.”
~*~
They entered the locker room to find Rick standing in front of Merry’s locker, insane with rage and snorting like a bull ready to stampede. His ugly grey ears stood at attention, and a long, thick tail whipped the air behind him.
Merry stopped in his tracks as alarm bells sounded in his head. He shifted on his feet, fighting to stifle the flight response that had become a permanent fixture in him over the past three years.
Quinn one-arm hugged Merry before letting his arm slip from Merry’s shoulders. He moved down the aisle toward Rick, his tall, lithe frame graceful with each step. Merry wanted to reach for him, to stop him from going any closer, to tell him it wasn’t safe.
Quinn stood directly in front of Rick, no more than an arm’s length away. His anger hummed softly up Merry’s spine, as if they were strangely magically connected, and he knew—rather, felt—only extraordinary self-control kept Quinn from tearing Rick apart. The muscles in Quinn’s back flexed and twitched beneath his white T-shirt and told Merry he was fighting hard to keep from losing his temper and changing into his other form.
“What in hell are you?” Rick growled.
“Ye needn’t be concerned with what I be. Ye need be concerned with what ye be.”
“Undo it,” Rick growled through clenched teeth.
Quinn shook his head slowly. “Nay, Rick Adams. Jammy ye be that be the only thing I done to ye. Ye deserve far, far worse, cur that ye be.”
“Undo it! Now! Or I’ll destroy you!”
Quinn’s hand was suddenly up in front of Rick’s face, his fingers spread wide. It slowly morphed into the clawed hand of the beast he’d become in the cafeteria. “Reel yer neck in, Rick Adams. Ye not be makin’ anyone dead.” He flexed clawed fingers at Rick.
For the first time in Merry’s pathetic high school history, he saw fear flicker in Rick’s eyes.
“Now go on. Hump off afore I pan ye out again. And keep ye a fair distance from Merry, lest ye be pushin’ up daisies afore ye time.”
Quinn turned to head back to Merry, and Rick made the mistake of grabbing Quinn’s shoulder with one hand and pulling the other back in preparation for a punch.
Quinn’s clawed hand shot out and met with Rick’s chunky chest. He flew twenty feet backward down the aisle, his back hitting the wall with enough force to crack the tiles around him.
Quinn advanced on him, his anger large on the air, and Merry was now afraid Quinn would do something irreversible. He ran down the aisle after Quinn and reached him just as he grasped the front of Rick’s shirt.
“Quinn, wait! Don’t!”
“Pog mo thoin! Ye dare lay a hand on Merry or me again and ye get a right bollixing from me. Ye be warned for the last time, Rick Adams.” Quinn shoved a dazed Rick against the wall one last time before turning back to Merry and guiding him back down the aisle.
“Get ye gym clothes on, Merry.”
Merry continued to feel Quinn’s anger hum up his spine as he opened the locker door and began to dress. “Pog-ma-ho-en? Is that, like, a spell or something?”
Quinn dressed quickly. “It mean kiss me arse. The boy be nothin’ more than a bleedin’ spleen with a face like a back of a bus and he need to stop he tomfoolery afore he get hurt.”
Merry slipped his gym shoes on. “Um, okay.”
Everyone around them acted as if they hadn’t seen or heard a thing as they finished dressing and headed out of the locker room.
Quinn slammed the locker door and Merry jumped. “Sorry, Merry. Didn’t mean to frighten ye. C’mon, now.” Quinn held a hand out to him.
Merry looked at the hand that had only moments ago been the clawed hand of a monster. “Y-you want me to hold your hand?”
Quinn wagged his hand. “C’mon.”
It looked normal, and Merry didn’t see any fur, or scales, or claws, or boils, or warts, or anything else his imagination could think of. He took it tentatively. Quinn wrapped his soft, warm hand around Merry’s, and led him from the locker room.
~*~
Quinn had asked Merry to wait for him at his locker after school. Merry shifted nervously from foot to foot, worried Rick or one of his goons would show up and kick the crap out of him. Some guy who Merry didn’t know walked by, shoved his shoulder, and left a loud “faggot” to ring on the air in his wake. Merry turned into his locker and tried to make himself small. Which wasn’t hard. He was small. And scrawny.
“I be on me way, Meriadoc,” came a whisper in Merry’s mind. He nearly jumped out of his skin. How did Quinn do stuff like that?
Relief flooded him when Quinn rounded the corner and headed straight for him. With a girl in tow. The same girl who kissed his lips. Great.
“Merry, this be Emily. Emily, this be Merry.”
Her face became a contorted mask of disgust. “Him? That’s who you have to walk home?”
She said it with such overt revulsion that Merry cringed and tried to melt into the lockers behind him.
“Don’t have to, lass. I choose to,” Quinn said easily.
She turned a harsh glare back to Quinn. “But he’s gay!”
“Aye, he be.”
Understanding filled her eyes and she gaped at him. “Ohmygosh! You’re a fairy!”
“Aye, I be.”
“I kissed you!” she huffed.
“Aye, lass, ye did.”
“And you didn’t say anything!” she puffed.
“I did not.”
She slapped his cheek hard, turned on a heel, and walked away.
“Whoa.” Merry watched her walk away then turned back to Quinn. “Are you all right?”
Quinn rubbed his cheek. “Aye. Seems she be a little short on she threshold.”
“Meaning?”
“Poor in she tolerance.”
Merry rolled his eyes. Who wasn’t when it came to anything Merry the fairy?
“Ye be ready to go?”
“Yeah. Have you seen Rick?” Merry asked as they headed to the front doors of the school.
“Nay. Why ye ask?”
Merry did his usual front-of-the-school-recon through the window next to the door. “I like to know where he is before I leave school.”
“No matter where he be.” Quinn opened the door for him.
“Yeah, it does.” Merry stepped outside with trepidation and turned back just as Quinn put an arm around him.
Quinn pulled him in. “I keep watch for ye, me wee dote.”
“Dote?”
Quinn shrugged. “Object of me fondness.”
Merry couldn’t help it. He grinned from ear to ear feeling cared for and unafraid for the first time in more than three years.
©Cody Kennedy. All Rights Reserved.
v.10.7.20
v.10.7.20
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